Well, I do hope layout customization comes back in the near future at least. I miss being able to rearrange everything, including moving tabs to the bottom. I know Chrome itself is stubborn about no layout customization but hopefully the core code is flexible.

Thanks for your assistance!

My best guess is that there's a new option in Opera Developer that doesn't exist in Opera 20: "Download extensions into profile directory"

Yeah, that's really odd, Opera Developer 22.0.1471.8 is just fine for me. Opera 20.0.1387.91 by comparison just pops up a blank window. I made sure I have the same extensions installed in both Opera 20 and Opera Developer and confirmed all the settings are the same on both. So hopefully it's fine on the next Opera update.

By the way, is it possible at all to specify addon buttons to be optionally added left of the address bar? I'm trying to simulate the old bookmarks panel which always pops up on the left of the screen.

Really? Weird. I am on Windows 7 64-bit and using Opera 20 (at least to test it). I see the little jigsaw piece show up when I install the extension example, but when I click on it all I get is a small white window. I have unfoldered bookmarks and a couple bookmarks in folders to see what shows up but it appears nothing is detected. I am not using stash or speed dial at all.

I am using the extension link labeled "You can download the working extension and have a play with it".

I've reported out of date bookmark specs as bug DNA-19859. The example on this page no longer works. That probably explains why not a single bookmark extension has been updated in a few months. I'll likely roll my own once the page is updated to conform to the new bookmark folder structure.

http://dev.opera.com/extensions/tut_bookmarks.html

I can't find anything in the extension API currently for moving tabs to the bottom of the screen like I'm able to do in Opera 12.

I found this example but it... doesn't work.
http://dev.opera.com/extensions/tut_bookmarks.html

Can an Opera Dev please update this tutorial to work with the current bookmarks implementation, since that changed? All I get is a blank window.

As for moving tabs to the bottom of the browser... it looks like Chrome Devs pretty much said "no" to all layout customizations in the past several years. I don't give a flying patootie about my background image, I want to change my browser layout. I hope the Opera team is able to change the code enough to allow for layout changes.

Also, I wish I could put those extension buttons on the left side of the browser...

Well, I'm not seeing ANY bookmark extensions updating... am I gonna have to learn how to make my own?

Yes, but it's too easy to keep posting requests (demands in some cases) for features without knowing or appreciating the work the Opera team are doing. Plus everyone has specific features they like, which ones to implement first?

Oh, I fully appreciate what they are doing, I'm a software developer myself. That's why I'm keeping my dream features list a lot smaller than it could be.

I agree cozza, the most productive thing we can do is just to make our voice heard and hope for the best. I definitely agree that Presto was getting buggy a couple years ago and more and more sites stopped working right in it. I don't expect IRC, RSS, or a built in mail browser anytime soon (rarely if ever used those) but I'd at least like to see the features I use day-to-day in Opera 20. Maybe I should figure out how to build an Opera extension myself...